Article in Current Opinion in Immunology Journal Declares Coming "Decade of DNA Vaccines"

BLUE BELL, Pa.,
May 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Inovio
Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE Amex: INO), a leader in the development
of therapeutic and preventive vaccines against cancers and
infectious diseases, announced today that the prestigious journal
Current Opinion in Immunology has published an article in
its current issue entitled, "Electroporation Delivery of DNA
Vaccines: Prospects for Success." The article was co-authored by
Dr. Niranjan Sardesai, Inovio's
Senior Vice President, Research & Development, and Dr.
David Weiner, Chairman, Scientific
Advisory Board, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, and Professor, Department
of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania. Readers can purchase
the article at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.coi.2011.03.008.

The article affirms that DNA vaccines are nearing the
threshold of a medical leap far beyond the power of traditional
vaccines, which employ 60-year-old development concepts. According
to the article, "From the vaccinologists' perspective, DNA, due to
its ability to combine the power of genomics with in vivo antigen
expression, provides a tantalizing opportunity to easily customize
vaccines through the use of molecular biology. Indeed it can be
said that DNA vaccines bring to fore the strengths of molecular
biology and genetic engineering to harness the potential of the
immune system."

The authors, each with more than a decade of DNA
vaccine development expertise, see the unique attributes of DNA
vaccines that could lead to major medical and commercial advances.
"The ability to easily combine multiple plasmids or disparate gene
products into a single formulation without apparent loss of potency
allows the possibility to formulate multi-component vaccines
targeting multiple antigens or even multiple pathogens
simultaneously….. Such vaccines can be designed to increase
the breadth of the immune responses and potentially increase
pathogen coverage…. Approaches such as the use of synthetic
consensus immunogens and mosaics – both approaches available
simply in a DNA based platform – are expanding the notion of
vaccine design to focus on developing 'universal' vaccines to
simultaneously target multiple divergent but related strains of
given pathogens."

DNA vaccines, which use a fragment of DNA designed to
produce an antigenic protein related to a particular disease, could
provide the following important attributes:

Accelerated development times

Easy, cost effective manufacturing using well established
methods

No ability to reproduce and spread disease

Broad, powerful immune responses, stimulating not only antibody
production, as do today's vaccines, but also T-cells, which are
required to kill cancerous cells or cells infected by chronic
infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C virus

Preventive & therapeutic capabilities

Dr. J. Joseph Kim,
Inovio's president and CEO, said: "This distinguished journal
article on DNA vaccines affirms the accomplishments and potential
of this field. At Inovio we are proud to be a leader in advancing
novel DNA plasmid vaccines and enhanced delivery using
electroporation, with vaccines for HIV, influenza and cancer all in
clinical trials. We look forward to our leadership role in the
coming "Decade of DNA Vaccines."

The article by Drs. Sardesai and Weiner emphasizes the
progress of electroporation (EP) as the preferred DNA vaccine
delivery technology. "EP mediated delivery has generated
considerable enthusiasm and appears to have had a great impact in
vaccine immunogenicity and efficacy by increasing antigen delivery
up to a 1000 fold over naked DNA delivery alone. This increased
delivery has resulted in an improved in vivo immune response
magnitude as well as response rates relative to DNA delivery by
direct injection alone."

Electroporation is a method to introduce
macro-molecules such as nucleic acids into cells, either in vivo or
in vitro, via the application of brief electric pulses to induce
transient and reversible permeabilization of the cell membrane.
Electroporation-based DNA delivery systems have been shown to
dramatically increase cellular uptake of a DNA vaccine and
resulting gene expression (i.e. production of the coded protein)
and increase immune responses by 100 times or more compared to
plasmid DNA delivered without other delivery enhancements.

The article also compares several DNA vaccine delivery
technologies, coming to the conclusion that, "The immune responses
and protection from pathogen challenge observed following DNA
administration via EP in many cases are comparable or superior to
other well studied vaccine platforms including viral vectors and
live/attenuated/inactivated virus vaccines. Significantly, the
early promise of EP delivery shown in numerous pre-clinical animal
models of many different infectious diseases and cancer are now
translating into equally enhanced immune responses in human
clinical trials, making the prospects for this vaccine approach to
impact diverse disease targets tangible."

About Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Inovio is developing a new generation of vaccines,
called DNA vaccines, to treat and prevent cancers and infectious
diseases. These SynCon™ vaccines are designed to provide
broad cross-strain protection against known as well as newly
emergent strains of pathogens such as influenza. These vaccines, in
combination with Inovio's proprietary electroporation delivery
devices, have been shown to be safe and generate significant immune
responses. Inovio's clinical programs include HPV/cervical
dysplasia and cancer (therapeutic), avian flu (preventive), and HIV
vaccines (both preventive and therapeutic). Inovio is developing
universal influenza and other vaccines in collaboration with
scientists from the University of
Pennsylvania. Other partners and collaborators include
Merck, National Cancer Institute, U.S. Military HIV Research
Program, HIV Vaccines Trial Network, National Microbiology
Laboratory of the Public Health Agency of Canada, and PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.
More information is available at www.inovio.com.

This press release contains certain forward-looking
statements relating to our business, including our plans to develop
electroporation-based drug and gene delivery technologies and DNA
vaccines and our capital resources. Actual events or results may
differ from the expectations set forth herein as a result of a
number of factors, including uncertainties inherent in pre-clinical
studies, clinical trials and product development programs
(including, but not limited to, the fact that pre-clinical and
clinical results referenced in this release may not be indicative
of results achievable in other trials or for other indications,
that the studies or trials may not be successful or achieve the
results desired, that results from one study may not necessarily be
reflected or supported by the results of other similar studies and
that results from an animal study may not be indicative of results
achievable in human studies), the availability of funding to
support continuing research and studies in an effort to prove
safety and efficacy of electroporation technology as a delivery
mechanism or develop viable DNA vaccines, the adequacy of our
capital resources, the availability or potential availability of
alternative therapies or treatments for the conditions targeted by
the company or its collaborators, including alternatives that may
be more efficacious or cost-effective than any therapy or treatment
that the company and its collaborators hope to develop, evaluation
of potential opportunities, issues involving product liability,
issues involving patents and whether they or licenses to them will
provide the company with meaningful protection from others using
the covered technologies, whether such proprietary rights are
enforceable or defensible or infringe or allegedly infringe on
rights of others or can withstand claims of invalidity and whether
the company can finance or devote other significant resources that
may be necessary to prosecute, protect or defend them, the level of
corporate expenditures, assessments of the company's technology by
potential corporate or other partners or collaborators, capital
market conditions, our ability to successfully integrate Inovio and
VGX Pharmaceuticals, the impact of government healthcare proposals
and other factors set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K
for the year ended December 31, 2009, our Form 10-Q for the
nine months ended September 30, 2010,
and other regulatory filings from time to time. There can be no
assurance that any product in Inovio's pipeline will be
successfully developed or manufactured, that final results of
clinical studies will be supportive of regulatory approvals
required to market licensed products, or that any of the
forward-looking information provided herein will be proven
accurate.

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